This chapter, Tovani focuses on how to grade student work, and how to get them to want to do the work for you. In the beginning of the chapter, she talks with a group of seniors that think this class is much like the rest, big test they study for the night before. She informs them that it is more participation based but it is basically tests every day. She also goes into different forms of assessment, like the reading log I am doing right now. She talks about getting kids to be interested in what they are doing instead of just doing it for teachers or parents. All this is again a great strategy to make students feel valued. However, I reflected on this chapter and how it applies to me and it seems to hit home for my assumptions for my classroom. I will be a Biology teacher in about a year. Will I do notes for 3 weeks and then hit the kids with a test? Will I be the teacher that doesn’t think outside the box and stresses kids out? Maybe, but at least now with this chapter in mind I can help create some “padding” as she calls it for the students grades. One of my greatest weaknesses in school is skipping assignments. If I know that I only lose 25 points for an assignment, and I don’t want to do it, it won’t get done. However, if I know that an assignment is work 100 points, that sounds much bigger and worth my time doing well. If I can harness this thinking and mentality of my own, then maybe I can help students not to have that internal battle of “can my grade survive this”. If all my assignments seem too heavy to skip then they may just surprise me and do them well. I will also have to have serious craft with creating my assignments. The more mundane and normal they are, the more students will debate doing them because they get bored doing the same thing over and over.
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